Alcohol pricing - where drinks is priced according to its alcoholic strength – would lead to a reduction in binge drinking, according to Sheffield University research. Photograph: David Kilpatrick/Alamy

For a while last year, alcohol campaigners thought Scotland might do what doctors want – and scientists say works – and change the price of alcoholic drinks to reflect their strength. But the alcohol industry had no intention of allowing that to happen.

Dr Evelyn Gillan, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, was in the thick of the fight, and saw the drinks industry throw everything at it. "At one point there were three public affairs consultancies working on it, getting stories in the paper every week, saying it would be a disaster for Scotland.

"Industry put all its UK-based lobbyists into Scotland for the 18 months it was under consideration. I never attended a single meeting that didn't have three or four UK-based industry representatives."

In March 2010, the Lancet published the Sheffield study – scientific research which concluded that the most effective way to reduce the harm of drinking was to introduce pricing for each individual unit of alcohol. People would cut down their drinking or turn to lower strength drinks, it found.

There were urgent attempts to undermine the research. The Institute of Social Marketing at the University of Stirling was approached "to rubbish the study" by one of the major supermarkets, Gillan says, but declined.

But the Centre for Economic and Business Research accepted a commission from brewers SAB Miller to do a critique. "The CEBR were authors of a study just before the legislation to ban smoking in public places went through in Scotland, showing it would cause economic devastation," said Gillan.

The tobacco industry's cause was lost, but the alcohol industry won the day on unit pricing. The CEBR gave evidence to the Scottish parliament on an equal footing with the Royal Society. Gillan said its study, denying the Sheffield findings, played a critical role – although political wrangling, with the SNP in favour of unit pricing and Labour and the Conservatives against, probably did as much to sink the idea. When unit pricing was taken out of the bill, all the opposition MPs received a free crate of beer from SAB Miller.

Diageo, the giant drinks manufacturer which owns brands such as J&B Whisky, Smirnoff vodka and Guinness, opposes unit pricing. Mark Baird, its corporate social responsibility manager, said the Sheffield study did not prove the case.

"It was based on modelling. There was no evidence because nobody has tried unit pricing," he said. It pre-supposed that a young person on income support would behave the same way if the price per unit rose as would the son or daughter of a millionaire, he argued.

He said the CEBR report "pointed out a number of flaws within the Sheffield report … I think it does have a degree of credibility". The industry also attacked a major scientific report to the EU, written by Peter Anderson and Ben Baumberg of the UK's Institute of Alcohol Studies, a research and awareness organisation set up by the temperance movement.

"It was my first experience of how the confrontation with the industry happens," said Baumberg. "I'm not a temperance person and have no moral agenda and was quite happy the industry should be able to lobby for their interests. I thought I was prepared, but I was completely wrong."

The industry got involved from the start, debating the evidence, sending in documents, calling meetings. The report ballooned, said Baumberg. And then there were the personal attacks.

"MEPs came up to the European commissioner and staff with letters from industry representatives, effectively saying why did you give this report to people who are insane. It was a bit shocking really. The institute does have strong links to temperance organisations but we are not a temperance organisation.

"We spread scientific understanding of alcohol-related harm. We are about public health, with no secret agenda. I don't think anybody reading the report could think it is the view of a crazed abstinence lot."

The commission came under enormous pressure, says Baumberg. The industry insisted the EU report be peer-reviewed, which had never before happened to a public health report, not even on tobacco.

Nine months after the report was supposed to have been delivered, a peer review meeting of industry and non-industry scientists was convened. Industry, said Baumberg "chose people they thought would disagree with everything we had written". "What actually happened was that [the meeting] congratulated the authors for producing a very fair and balanced report."

The industry did not let go. After the report was published in the summer of 2006, the Brewers of Europe trade organisation commissioned the Weinberg consulting group to produce its own report, ignoring Baumberg and Anderson's work. The organisation hailed this as an independent scientific report on alcohol.

Arguing over the evidence and denying the credibility of research appears to have paid off. The UK government, under Tony Blair and now under David Cameron, has not been convinced of the case for unit pricing – even though the former chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and doctors' organisations from the British Medical Association to the Royal College of Physicians all support it.

The industry presents itself as an important player in the debate over how to tackle what it presents as a small minority of people who abuse alcohol. Gillan says when she took on her current job, she had six letters in her in-tray and five were from the industry wanting to talk. "The tactics they are using are all about promoting partnership," she says. "The industry seeks to get a seat at the policy table."

When the government was considering alcohol pricing last year, James Brokenshire, the Home Office minister in charge of the policy, had one meeting with an external organisation during the consultation period of August and September. He met Simon Litherland, the managing director of Diageo, to discuss "alcohol sales and licensing regulations".

Litherland told a magazine last year: "The vast majority of people drink alcohol responsibly and people who abuse alcohol will continue to do so even if it is more expensive."

A Home Office spokesman declined to release the minutes from the meeting.

A spokeswoman for Diageo said that the government's commitment to banning the sale of alcohol below cost was discussed, with a number of other issues. "We shared our views on these subjects with the minister and he listened politely," she said.

Brokenshire had also earlier met representatives from Heineken UK in July 2010, the company confirmed. Sources close to Heineken said they had discussed minimum pricing.

Dr Nick Sheron, a liver specialist in Southampton, is on the Drinkaware Trust, a charity set up by the industry's lobbying association, the Portman Group. It had looked as if it would be dominated and run by industry, but after some hard work from those on the health side, there is now equal representation.

Sheron said he had had "enormous qualms" about working with industry, "but I'm not a quitter. If I walk away, there will be no pressure to the same extent to change. I believe it is reasonable to talk to industry. I believe there are many things the industry could be doing which they are not doing."

Like all the health experts in the field, he is frustrated by the lack of government action. "Liver deaths have gone up four-fold in the last 30 years and doubled in the last 15 years and are still going up. We have got a really serious issue with liver disease. The issue is what is the government doing about it? They appear to be putting alcohol policy in the hands of the alcohol industry.

"One wonders how many more people have to die before a government puts the health of its citizens above the profits of the drinks industry."